This I Believe

I believe that at the end of the game the king and the pawn return to the same box. I believe that whether a man is rich, poor, black, white, green, purple, privileged or oppressed, he will ultimately end in the same oblivion from whence he came. I believe that all walks of man, and all those beliefs hanging from the coat-tails of those walking the diverse paths of existence culminate with a return to a single non-existence.

I believe that the journey from fertilization to birth is means of entering a limited existence by which each individual interprets his world differently than all those around him. Rights given by placement at birth all equate to nothing once that existence has reached its final point: the death of an interpretation of reality. As each of us gains and retains the information available to us as a gift from the one existence we co-exist within, we form our own values, our own personas, our own beliefs.

But this, I believe: I believe that in the end what you, he, she or I believe will not matter. I believe that death equates us all. I believe that gazing into the skull of the deceased fool can do the privileged man invaluable good in coming to the realization that his skull looks no different than the fool’s in front of him. Each of us is constructed in the same matter, to be born in the same manner, to grow in the same manner, to die in the same manner and return to the “box” from which we had been selected in order to advance across a board of open territory, mysterious but systematic, vast but limited in possibility for movement and advancement.

While in the game some only withhold the ability to advance one step at a time, only to sacrifice their efforts for the betterment of their beliefs and associations as a whole, some are guarded by many powerful beliefs and motives, simply because they were born, created to possess the position in which they hold, even if their own physical power hardly exceeds that of those below them. The game can only end with the obliteration of pieces from the board. Big, small, thin and tall, short and stout. Rooks, Bishops, Knights, Kings and pawns all return to the same, dark oblivion from whence they came. And the box remains shut until a new game is proposed, a new life is formed, a new generation is conceived, when all new strategies will influence the outcome of the interpretation of the game of existence.

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Top 100 Essays USB Drive

This USB drive contains 100 of the top This I Believe audio broadcasts of the last ten years, plus some favorites from Edward R. Murrow's radio series of the 1950s. It's perfect for personal or classroom use! Click here to learn more.

This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.